


Love After Hell-Fire

by emokid6969



Series: Young and Recless [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Hell, Love, Nightmares, Other, Possession, True Love, eternal love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:27:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28375425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emokid6969/pseuds/emokid6969
Summary: Dean is cursed. Sam isn't sure who Dean is anymore. By the time the curse is lifted, Sam's not there to see how much Dean loves them. Will Sam return to see Dean un-possessed? Or have the nightmares ruined everything? (Hint: the nightmares don't ruin everything, and they hold each other for literally forever after, because true love conquers all.)
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Series: Young and Recless [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1231370
Kudos: 4





	Love After Hell-Fire

It was after the third time Dean died for Sam that hunters started finding them and suggesting, in increasingly less subtle ways, that they both just stop saving each other and "let nature take its course". Dean, who had carefully dodged Hell three separate times through the careful application of Sam's library skills plus a blessed shotgun, was not interested.

But Sam started to wonder, and started to join in with the hunters. "Yeah," Sam would say with a laugh, shaking their hair out of their eyes. "I mean, if I went back to school, I could probably just stay out of this business, and Dean would be safe." This, after the yellow-eyed demon tracked Sam to a crappy dorm room; this, after the hunters had tried to kill Sam at the first mention of that single drop of demon blood, and it made Dean's stomach coil in fear, because if Sam couldn't remember the true danger, it would be Dean all alone, with their one true person far away, and Dean didn't care what shitty after-school guidance counselors said about other fish: you didn't abandon your true love to get dragged into Hell, ever, and especially not when they were the reason for your whole everything, when all Dean really needed was the air and to love Sam. And obviously also pie and a place to sleep, but those were really secondary to the main life mission of "love Sam; make Sam be sure that you love them".

When Sam had left for college Dean's life had ended. The shitty hotels that had had such a sense of adventure when it was Dean and Sam smelled like acute sadness when Dean was alone. And Dean slept with their phone curled against their chest, because if Sam called, that phone would be the thing that carried Sam's voice to them, and Dean missed Sam's voice so badly, and Sam's hair, and Sam's sleepy kisses, trusting and full. Dean sent text messages in bursts, asking Sam to let Dean come and stay with them, then would stop for weeks, afraid that they were scaring Sam off, and yet also afraid that every time they stopped texting as frequently, Sam would see that as Dean abandoning them. It was impossible, living without Sam, and yet Dean didn't ask Sam to come back until there was something that only Sam could help with, because Dean was afraid Sam wouldn't have come for anything else. But Sam had come, and saved Dean, and they had kept saving each other for the next five years.

Forty-six years in Hell and Dean had become a demon. Forty-six years of Hell-time, and six months on Earth, and none of that spent without every moment full of the miserable anguish of missing Sam. And Dean had come back pale and plagued by nightmares, but Sam had stayed, and held Dean through the night, and lost sleep.

As Sam started agreeing with the hunters, Dean started not asking Sam to hold them through the nightmares, which had increasingly become about Sam abandoning them. And then, hours later, when they finally did get the courage to ask, Sam would say that they hadn't been sleeping, anyway, and would have been glad to hold them, but in a sad way that seemed to express disappointment that Dean hadn't immediately asked, and which made Dean all the more determined to not ask for help the next night, when the nightmares would return, more fully fueled by this ongoing distress.

One night, the nightmares still alive in their every thought, Dean cried, "Fine! Just do it, just leave, I hate you, go away!" And Sam refused, knowing that Dean was lying, and Dean insisted, and the hunters who overheard from the next crappy motel room sought out Sam the next day and told them that it really was for their own good if they left. And after a while of this, Sam started saying "I know. I hate you, too." and left, and Dean grieved, and hated that Sam had believed that was what Dean had wanted, and hated the sickness for carving them into a shape they were not.

Dean killed the nightmare shortly after Sam disappeared, by falling asleep in the bath and, as the nightmare took on more solid form, drowning it in salt and whiskey, where it never returned with the same strength.

But the misery of Sam's leaving, of the atrocious things Dean had said under the influence of the nightmare, made a hole that was bigger than the one the nightmare had carved out, and Dean was terrified that Sam would see the hole and think it was the same one that had turned Dean into someone else. Dean loved Sam desperately, but tried not to send too many texts to Sam, afraid that any assertions of love would indicate demonic possession and spook Sam. But inside Dean's chest was the feeling from before Hell, only now, there was no Sam beside them each night as they fell asleep, and how would Sam even believe that Dean was truly theirself?

Instead, Dean asked for material things: for Sam to bring the potions that would heal the place in Dean's chest where the nightmare had sat and sucked away at Dean's entire self, for Sam to be Dean's partner in the ritual of the cleansing circle which would make Dean's hotel rooms sealed against all future nightmares. Things which Dean thought would convey stability, healing, Dean's old self, and a return to their eternal pairing.

Dean waited a long time, but Sam showed up, messy-haired, caring. And Dean dropped back onto the hotel mattress, breathless with nervous joy, and held their arms out for Sam's embrace. And Sam knelt beside the bed and held Dean firmly, and when they opened their arms again for air, Dean kept their hand on Sam's stomach, never wanting a second to pass that they weren't reassuring Sam of their love.

_And they were known as the twin hunters, the lovers, and they lived forevermore inseparable._


End file.
